During the operation of an internal combustion piston engine, gas and mass forces are produced per cylinder of the internal combustion engine and lead to a resulting piston force per cylinder. Depending on the number and arrangement of the cylinders along a crankshaft of the internal combustion engine, the individual piston forces overlap each other in a different manner. An unfavorable overlap leads to the occurrence of free forces and torques and to an additional loading of the engine supports as well as to greater operating noises. For this reason, so-called compensation shafts are used in present-day internal combustion piston engines in which the overlap of the piston forces of the cylinders is unfavorable. These compensation shafts comprise unbalanced masses that are purposefully arranged along the shaft so as to counteract the occurring free forces and torques. Depending on whether the forces and torques concerned are of the first or the second order, the compensation shafts rotate at the same speed of rotation or at double the speed of rotation of the crankshaft.